The Writing Prompt Boot Camp

Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 295

For this week’s prompt, write a free poem. Think free parking or a free space (in a board game). Think fat free, care free, or stone free (for all the Jimi Hendrix fans out there). Or think words with free in them, a la Freedom of Information Act. You’re free to take it in any free-wheeling direction you wish.

Here’s my attempt at a Free Poem:

tag was a silly game we played
when we were young. running
around until someone tagged you
to make you freeze. but maybe

hide & seek was sillier. or just
tag, because the same kid always
ended up being IT and unable
to catch the others. & then

regardless, we just liked to run
& hide & jump fences & eventually
hear the call, ollie ollie oxenfree,
which meant figuring out what’s next.

*****

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of the poetry collection, Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). He edits Poet’s Market, Writer’s Market, and Guide to Self-Publishing, in addition to writing a free weekly WritersMarket.com newsletter and poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine.

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182 thoughts on “Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 295”

is Loki. Free energy.
She arrived with crash of meteor. Fearsome
Puppy philosophy: meet-greet-with-teeth.
Delicate touch
of enamel against wrist, her sign of affection.
Your unyielding policy: No teeth on skin!

She continued up the cuff of your sleeve:
No teeth on fabric!
At last, a dog-human compromise:
you toss ice cubes, she’s the quickest
catch. Ice-shards sparkle scatter-
stars on kitchen floor. She loves you.

Elbow to elbow to elbow
didn’t know each other,
didn’t need to, felt his throat
in my words, her tongue
rounding my sentences,
though we were skinny things
in the thickness of bad whiskey,
the plastic stirrers in make-believe
crystal. I could feel our
bodies knocking against ice
and carbonation, I could feel
their hip bones and wet mouths,
the hope of staying fizzy forever,
of feeling strong in the morning,
the leftover shimmer of new
friendship and newness everywhere
in this ugly, no-good city, our chairs
rowed out like baby ducks from a book,
my throat slick with film, but they got it
all, they held my bones hungover
in their own threefold ribs.